Factors for and against resistance to smart services: role of consumer lifestyle and ecosystem related variables
ISSN: 0887-6045
Article publication date: 12 June 2019
Issue publication date: 18 September 2019
Abstract
Purpose
Consumers are increasingly connected to, and make use of, a multitude of technologies in their daily lives. The exponential growth in the use of Internet of Things (IoT)-based services is ushering in a new era of e-services, in which the service experience is becoming autonomous (intelligence), devices are intercommunicating (connectivity) and consumers can access the service anytime, anywhere and using any device (ubiquity). However, a number of challenges have arisen. The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that reduce consumer resistance to smart services (factors against resistance) and factors that promote this resistance (factors for resistance), by means of a dual-factor approach.
Design/methodology/approach
To test this theoretical model, the authors developed a Web-based survey and used structural equation modeling.
Findings
Results show that consumer-lifestyle factors (individual “mobiquity” and self-image congruence) reduce consumer resistance to smart services (factors against resistance). Conversely, innovation-related factors (perceived security, perceived complexity) and ecosystem-related factors (perceived government surveillance and general skepticism toward IoT) promote consumer resistance to smart services (factors for resistance). In addition, general skepticism toward IoT has a significant positive effect on perceived complexity, perceived security risk and perceived government surveillance.
Originality/value
This research investigates consumer resistance to smart services using a dual-factor perspective (Cenfetelli, 2004; Claudy et al., 2015): factors reducing resistance versus factors promoting resistance. This paper provides evidence for the importance of consumer lifestyle-related factors, innovation-related factors and ecosystem-related factors in explaining consumer resistance to smart services. This work enriches previous studies of consumer resistance to innovation (Ram and Sheth, 1989; Ram, 1987) by studying original variables (individual mobiquity, technological innovativeness, government surveillance).
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Chair Finance, Banque Populaire—Caisse d’Epargne, of the University of Nantes Research Foundation. They are also grateful to the special issue editors and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the earlier versions of this manuscript.
The authors contributed equally to this work.
Citation
Chouk, I. and Mani, Z. (2019), "Factors for and against resistance to smart services: role of consumer lifestyle and ecosystem related variables", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 449-462. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-01-2018-0046
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited